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The Slavery Issue in Federal 
Politics 



BY 



ULRICH B. PHILLIPS 



Reprinted from 
THE SOUTH IN THE BUILDING OF THE NATION 

(Volume IV) 



THE SOUTHERN PUBLICATION SOCIETY 

RICHMOND, VA., 1909 



<^^ 








THE SLAVERY ISSUE IN FEDERAL 
POLITICS. 

The Causes of Sectionalism. 

F a principal cause may be assigned for the 
strife over slavery in American politics, it 
is that there were great numbers of negroes 
in one group of areas, and but a very slight 
proportion of them in the population elsewhere. A 
difference in the environment of people causes a 
difference in ihe policies adopted and the systems 
established. If such contrasts exist within a single 
body politic, each local group will strive for the con- 
trol of the government to shape the policies and laws 
to fit the needs of their localitj'' in preference to 
those of competing localities. The negroes, after 
being once imported, made up a part of the environ- 
ment in tlie plantation districts, and their control 
was one of the essential public problems. Just as 
cattle, lunatics, Indians and desperadoes must be 
held in restraint, the negroes, at least so many men 
thought, must be kept under more or less thorough 
control. Just as men wish to avoid jury duty, mill- 



FEDERAL POLITICS. 383 

tary service or official responsibility, so the citizens 
in many cases disrelished the burden of aiding in 
the capture and return of fugitive slaves; and as 
the people of one region dislike to be taxed to pro- 
mote the industries or support the veterans of an- 
other, so it was that many communities where the 
negro problem did not exist, grew restive under the 
laws^ or hostile to the policies established or con- 
tended for by the people of the black belts. With 
regard to negro questions, there was some degree of 
sectionalism within the bounds of every Southern 
state because the problems varied from area to area 
within each state; but that sectionalism never went 
beyond the bounds of moderation. There is, too, a 
moderate sectionalism inevitable in the United States 
at large upon numerous public questions, with its 
phases constantly changing in accordance with the 
shifting of economic interests and the ideas and 
spirit of the people. Under normal conditions the 
alliance and opposition of local interests and ideas 
is ahnost kaleidoscopic in the frequency of its change, 
for no single issue remains paramount long enough 
to harden the lines of cleavage. The controversy 
over negro slavery was the great exception by reason 
of the exaggeration of the issue and the addition 
of moral and religious excitement. To sectional 
rivalry were added jealousy, impatience, self-right- 
eousness and hatred. People began to bandy epithets 
and each party to the quarrel came to see only the 
mote in the other's eye and not the beam in its own. 
Affairs proceeded from bad to worse; moderation 
was lost ; truth seeking was given over ; indeed, truth 
was often denied by either party when presented, 
and at length all possibility of a sound and con- 
servative readjustment of race relations was de- 
stroyed. 



384 POLITICAL HISTOEY. 

The Beginning of Slavery in America. 

Equatorial Africa was discovered in the same 
period as the American continent, and its natural 
resource of crude labor was tapped and exploited 
simultaneously with the resources of gold in Mexico, 
sugar in the West Indies, tobacco in Virginia and 
rice in Carolina. The African staple of negro labor 
was looked upon in the period in much the same 
way as the American staples ; they all furnished the 
means of increasing private and public wealth. The 
Irish product of indentured white labor was still 
another item in the list of important staples. The 
prices of all these commodities were regularly 
quoted in the colonial markets; merchants dealt in 
them indifferently and people in need of labor 
bought servants or slaves just as people in need of 
tobacco, sugar or rice bought supplies of these. 
There seems not to have been much discussion of 
the right or wrong of holding men to indented serv- 
ice or slavery. Wage-earning labor was not to be 
had on any feasible terms in most parts of America 
and captains of industry were forced to buy bond- 
men or do without laborers. 

Slavery in England: The Sommersett Case. 

Experiments with negro labor were made in each 
of the American colonies and even in the mother 
country, England. In every case the community soon 
confronted the problem of controlling it. Systems, 
of some sort, grew up through custom in each area 
and were in time recognized by the courts and in 
most instances were elaborated by statutes. Eng- 
land and each of the colonies maintained a system 
of slavery for many years and did not in any case 
abolish it unless and until the commonwealth in 
question found slavery more troublesome to main- 
tain than it was worth. In England many people in 



FEDERAL POLITICS. 385 

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries held negro 
domestic servants in a status almost or quite iden- 
tical with American slavery, and a court decision 
of 1729 practically declared slaveholding legal in the 
realm by empowering a colonial planter to seize 
and carry home with him a slave whom he had 
brought to England on a visit. This decision was 
confirmed by another in 1749. The following ac- 
count of affairs in England was printed in the issue 
of Gentleman's Magazine for October, 1764: 

"The practice of importing servants into these kingdoms is said to be 
already a grievance that requires a remedy, and yet it is every day en- 
couraged, insomuch that the number in this metropolis only is supposed 
to be nearly 20,000; the main objections to their importation is that they 
cease to consider themselves as slaves in this free country, nor will they 
put up with an inequality of treatment, nor more willingly perform the 
laborious offices of servitude than our own people, and if put to it are 
generally sullen, spiteful, treacherous and revengeful. It is therefore 
higlily impolitic to introduce them as servants here where that rigour 
and severity is impracticable which is absolutely necessary to make 
them useful." 

When such conditions were prevailing with regard 
to the negroes and when at the same time English 
laborers could be hired cheaply and in abundance, 
it was natural that slavery should lose public sanc- 
tion and be esteemed a nuisance. In fact, the very 
decision which overthrew negro slavery in England 
recited the tone of public opinion as the main ground 
for the court's action. This decision was rendered 
in 1772 by Lord Mansfield in the case of James 
Sommersett on a writ of Habeas Corpus. Sommer- 
sett, a negro, had been carried from America to 
England by his master, James Steuart. When 
Steuart let it be known he was about to return 
home, Sommersett absconded. Steuart had him 
seized and put on board a vessel in the Thames to 
be returned to Jamaica and sold. Sommersett sued 
out a writ of Habeas Corpus and Mansfield, after 
an unsuccessful effort to patch up the case and 

Vol 4—26. 



386 POLITICAL HISTORY. 

keep it out of court, decided that inasmuch as the 
power of the writ of Habeas Corpus was not expressly 
limited by statute to free persons, it ought to be 
extended to slaves in England when they invoked 
it and should be held to override the rights of mas- 
ters under the laws, because these were now regarded 
by public opinion as odious and oppressive. Negro 
slavery in England never recovered from this blow, 
largely for the reason that no important element in 
the realm had any strong interest in maintaining the 
institution. 

Localization of the American Problem. 

In the English colonies the use of slave labor in- 
creased or languished according as the opportuni- 
ties of employing labor of tropical habits and crude 
ability were good or bad. For example, in Massa- 
chusetts, a commercial colony with rigorous winters, 
the proportion of slaves ranged no higher than one 
or two per cent, of the population; New York, a 
cereal producing area, had in 1700 about 23,000 
whites and 2,200 negroes, in 1756 about 85,000 whites 
and 13,500 negroes, and in 1790, 314,142 whites, 
21,234 negro slaves and 4,654 free colored ; Virginia, 
producing tobacco, with a moderate climate, had in 
1700 about 70,000 whites and 8,000 negro slaves, in 
1756 about 173,000 whites and 120,000 negro slaves, 
and in 1790, 442,117 whites, 292,627 negro slaves and 
12,866 free colored; while South Carolina, which 
during the colonial period was mainly a sub-tropical 
rice-planting area, had in 1708 about 4,000 whites 
and 4,000 negro slaves, in 1750, 25,000 whites and 
40,000 negro slaves, and in 1790, 140,173 whites, 
107,094 negro slaves and 1,801 free colored. The 
results of the experiments during the colonial period 
went to show that negro labor could be used with 
jH-ofit only where the conditions were specially favor- 



FEDERAL POLITICS. 387 

able for large-scale industry by unskilled gangs in 
a steady routine, and that such conditions prevailed 
in notable extent only in the regions southward of 
Pennsylvania. Though slavery was legal every- 
where north of Mason and Dixon's Line, it was of 
slight and steadily decreasing importance as the 
basis of industry. Furthermore, north of that line 
the negroes were so few that their unregulated exist- 
ence could never endanger the social safety of the 
whites. The Northern states, accordingly, were able 
to provide by law for the gradual dwindling and 
death of slavery, and meanwhile to permit their citi- 
zens to sell many of their slaves southward. Except 
in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, where to the 
general surprise of the people emancipation was ac- 
complished by judicial decisions, each of the North- 
ern states enacted provisions between 1777 and 1804 
for the very gradual disestablishment of slavery 
within their respective bounds. Many of the North- 
ern slaves were sent to swell the dimensions of the 
Southern problem. When the period of their eman- 
cipation came, those remaining in the North quietly 
assumed status as a lower caste in society, nominally 
free and equal to the whites but possessing rather 
limited privileges at the sufferance of the body po- 
litic, and actually submitting to heavy industrial and 
legal discriminations. 

On the other hand, in the Southern states where 
gang labor in the plantation system was the main- 
stay of industry and commerce, and where the pro- 
portion of negroes in the population was generally 
large and in many localities almost overwhelming, 
the problem of doing away with slavery would have 
been extremely difficult in view of the double danger 
in prospect, industrial paralysis and social chaos. 



388 POLITICAL HISTORY. 

The Grounds for Disapproving Slavery. 

The serious, delicate and complex nature of the 
slavery problem was early appreciated in America, 
and almost from the beginning the principle was 
asserted that, for its own welfare, each colony should 
be vested with full control of matters regarding 
slavery and the slave trade so far as concerned its- 
own territory. The refusal of the British govern- 
ment to permit the Virginia Assembly to restrict 
the importation of slaves was, for example, an im- 
portant contributory cause in the movement for in- 
dependence. 

The grounds upon which men of the colonial and 
ante-bellum periods opposed slavery varied widely 
and were often unrelated to one another. They may 
be stated as follows: 1. The resentment of white 
laborers against negro competition. This was re- 
gardless of whether the negro workmen were free 
and unaided competitors or were protected in the 
interests of powerful masters by the aegis of slavery. 
John Adams very justly said : 

" Argument might have [had] some weight in the abolition of slavery 
in Massachusetts, but the real cause was the multiplication of labouring 
white people, who would no longer suffer the rich to employ these sable 
rivals so much to their injury. This principle has kept negro slavery 
out of France, England and other parts of Europe." 

2. A further ground was the tendency of the slave- 
holding regime toward lessening the thrift of the 
whites. For example, William Byrd, of Virginia, 
wrote in 1737 : 

" I am sensible of many bad consequences of multiplying these Ethi- 
opians amongst us. They blow up the pride and ruin the Industry of 
our White People, who seeing a Rank of poor Creatures below them, 
detest work for fear it will make them look like Slaves." 

3. The drain of money involved by the Importa- 
tion of slaves into each new industrial area. For 
instance, in 1785 to 1790 the conservatives in South 
Carolina politics favored the prohibition of the slave- 



FEDERAL POLITICS. '389 

trade as a means of restoring prosperity in the state, 
in opposition to the radical programme of stay-laws 
and paper money. 4. The theory of the inherent 
rights of men, which was particularly influential 
during the revolutionary period. 5. The doctrine 
that slavery was antagonistic to the Christian prin- 
ciples of democracy, and the corrolary that by hold- 
ing slaves men violated the supreme law and might 
be deprived of their usurped property without notice 
and without remuneration. This, together perhaps 
with the inherent rights doctrine, was the basis of 
the radical agitation represented by Wilberforce in 
England and Garrison in America for the immediate, 
universal and uncompensated abolition of the slave- 
trade and slavery. 6. The idea that the restraints 
of slavery were so irksome to the negroes that they 
were likely to revolt at any moment in a demand for 
freedom and in a spirit of revenge. This apprehen- 
sion was the proximate cause of the agitation in the 
Virginia legislature of 1831-32 for the disestablish- 
ment of slavery. 

The Anti-Slavery Movement of the Revolutionary Period. 
Except in the case of the Quakers, who denounced 
it upon grounds of religion, humanity and justice, 
and who accomplished little in the period, the oppo- 
sition to slavery prior to about 1760 was based 
mainly upon economic grounds and was met more or 
less effectually by counter arguments and by the 
firm refusal of the authorities to interfere with estab- 
lished institutions. During the Revolutionary period 
the champions of independence based their conten- 
tions mainly on inherent individual rights and 
were led to proclaim the universal validity of that 
doctrine with more or less earnestness. When ques- 
tions of the rights of negroes as persons were raised, 
Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Mason, Henry, 



390 * POLITICAL HISTORY. 

Laurens, Gadsden and others promptly condemned 
slavery as being as unjust to the negroes as it would 
have been to white men, and declared their willing- 
ness to secure its abolition as soon as it could be 
accomplished with due regard to jDublic safety. Jef- 
ferson wrote in his Notes on Virginia, in ''Query 
18": 

"With -what execrations should the statesman be loaded, who, per- 
mitting one half of the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, 
transforms those into despots and these into enemies. * * * And 
can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed 
their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these 
liberties ^.re the gift of God? That these are not to be violated but with 
his wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God 
is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever. * * *" 

But in ''Query 14" of the same book, Jefferson 
wrote a long catalogue of the negro characteristics 
which he thought would disqualify the race from 
mingling with white people as freemen in society, 
and practically committed himself against the gen- 
eral emancipation of the negroes unless they were 
promptly to be removed from the country. 

The Conservative Reaction, 1790-1815. 

This impasse confronting Jefferson confronted all 
the Southern opponents of slavery in this period. 
Their line of reasoning was : Slaveholding is wrong- 
in theory and is particularly unjust in a nation 
championing the principles of human liberty; but, 
in the mass, the negroes are obviously and utterly 
unfit as yet for freedom and citizenship in a highly 
civilized self-governing society, while to deport them 
would endanger the existence of the negroes and 
cripple the prosperity of the whites. The outcome 
of the metaphysical discussion among the statesmen 
of the period was a realization that those who would 
destroy slavery and at the same time safeguard the 
general welfare must lay aside their anti-slavery 



FEDEEAL POLITICS. 391 

contentions until some great change in conditions 
should render their problem soluble. Meanwhile the 
great bulk of the people in daily contact with the 
negroes were not troubling themselves with much 
thought of the black man's wrongs; and the negroes 
themselves were concerned more with pleasures of 
the senses and emotions than with the problems of 
legal freedom. 

It is curious that almost the only writer in the 
Kevolutionary period who squarely upheld the in- 
stitution of slavery was not a statesman but a his- 
torian. Bernard Romans, in his History of East 
and West Florida (London, 1776, pp. 104, 105), 
warned settlers against accepting the current dis- 
turbing doctrines and embarking upon costly experi- 
ments with European contract labor. He declared 
negro labor an essential of prosperity in the South, 
and chastisement to be necessary for the control of 
the perverse and indolent Africans. "Without doubt, 
a multitude of other practical men, who, however, 
rarely used pens and never wrote printers' copy, 
were like Romans devoted to the policy of con- 
servatism in racial adjustments. The tone of legis- 
lation in the Southern states has far more value in 
showing the public sentiment than have the ex- 
pressions of the metaphysical statesmen of the 
period. For example, North Carolina in 1796 and 
1801, Tennessee in 1801 and Georgia in 1801, passed 
laws restricting and hindering the private emancipa- 
tion of slaves; and in the years following Gabriel's 
insurrection in 1800 all the commonwealths of the 
South strenghtened their legislation for keeping the 
negroes in subordination. Much the same reasons 
underlay these measures as prompted the Massa- 
chusetts act of 1798 and the Illinois act of 1818 
restricting and discouraging the immigration of free 
colored persons into those states. 



392 POLITICAL HISTORY. 

In a word, as soon as the excitement of the Revo- 
lutionary times was over and the body politic began 
to set its house in order for everyday life, even the 
theorists stopped questioning the infinite, and the 
people in the negro districts proceeded much as they 
had done in colonial times. Two unconnected de- 
velopments in the period following 1790 added 
great strength to the reactionary movement. First : 
The established regime in San Domingo was upset 
by the reckless decrees of the revolutionary French 
government, and the mulattoes and then the negroes 
rebelled and spread rai:)ine throughout the island. 
Under their ex-slave general, Toussaint L'Ouver- 
ture, they defeated every expedition against them, 
drove practically all the whites from the island, and 
established an era of alternate truce and internecine 
war which has continued to the present day. Hun- 
dreds of exiled whites fled in 1792 and after to the 
continental seaboard and by word of mouth height- 
ened the effect of the lurid accounts which the cur- 
rent prints were already spreading. The main tend- 
ency of this, of course, was to tighten police restric- 
tions upon the negroes. Second: Still more im- 
portant in the trend of events was Whitney's inven- 
tion of the gin in 1793, which led to the amazingly 
rapid growth of the huge cotton industry, greatly 
heightening the value of all labor in the region of 
long summers, and intensifying the interest of slave- 
holders in insuring the permanent control of their 
labor. 

The effects of the San Domingan cataclysm and 
the invention of the gin is palpable : No state which 
had not prior to 1805 provided for the death of 
slavery within its bounds ever did so thereafter 
by its own legislation; and after 1795 no legislation 
thought to be unfriendly to the slaveholding interests 
ever passed Congress unless by overriding the op- 



FEDERAL POLITICS. 393 

position of the solid South. The act of 1807 pro- 
hibiting the foreign slave trade does not conflict with 
this latter statement, for at the time the act was 
expected to increase the value of the slaves on hand 
and thereby conduce to the profit of the established 
black belts, and to the disadvantage only of the un- 
developed Southwest. 

The Problem of Intersectional Adjustments in the Period 
from 1815 to 1861. 

When the peace of 1815 removed foreign complica- 
tions and internal problems became of paramount 
political importance, the delicacy of the sectional 
adjustment under the constitution and Federal laws 
began for the first time to be seriously appreciated. 
Issues involving slavery were now to be threshed 
out exhaustively in Congress and in the newspapers. 

The provisions affecting the slaveholding interests 
are familiar to every reader : That Congress might 
not prohibit the foreign slave trade before 1808; 
that Congress must provide for the interstate rendi- 
tion of fugitive slaves; that the ratio of propor- 
tional representation among the states in the lower 
house of Congress and of the assessment of direct 
taxes should be based upon the whole free popula- 
tion plus three-fifths of the slaves. In the genera- 
tion of the ''Constitutional Fathers" the important 
measures passed by Congress were : The Northwest 
Territory Ordinance of 1787, which excluded slavery 
from the region north of the Ohio River, and the act 
of 1793, which with only partial thoroughness pro- 
vided for the rendition of fugitive slaves. That these 
provisions, whether in the constitution or in the 
statutes, were in the nature of a compromise, was 
fairly understood in the period. James Madison 
prophesied even during the convention of 1787 that 
the prospective clash between the interests of the 



394 POLITICAL HISTOEY. 

slaveholding states and those of homogeneous white 
population furnished the one ground of ultimate 
danger to the Union. So long as foreign affairs ab- 
sorbed most of the public interest, there were but 
few wrangles in Congress to justify Madison's pre- 
diction; but as soon as external peace was estab- 
lished, internal sectional strife began, and Mason 
and Dixon's Line became the most famous boundary 
in America. 

The Crucial Problem of Controlling the Senate. 

The United States constitution nominally estab- 
lishes a government "of the people, by the people 
and for the people. ' ' It really provides for a govern- 
ment of the people, by the political majority, in 
behalf of the interests which control that majority. 
As soon as the divergence of sectional interests and 
the clash of policies become patent, the politicians 
and the people saw that the crux of their political 
strategy lay in controlling the majority in Congress. 
The South and North had originally been assigned 
an equal representation in the Senate, but the North 
was given a slight preponderance in the House. As 
the decades passed and the tide of European im- 
migrants poured into the regions of wage-earning 
industry, the North steadily and rapidly increased 
its House majority and the slave-employing South 
was barely able to hold its equality in the Senate. 
There was no danger of the South overriding the 
North by congressional measures, but there was a 
lively prospect of the North becoming able and quite 
possibly willing, to inflict its preferences upon the 
dissenting South. Among Southern politicians it 
became a vital, and later, a desperate problem to find 
means to maintain or restore the sectional balance 
and safeguard their constituents against threatened 
and perhaps irremediable oppression. Senatorial 



FEDERAL POLITICS. 395 

representation accordingly became the tunaamental 
issue between the sections. The matters of negro 
colonization, of maritime and diplomatic adjust- 
ments, of anti-slavery petitions, of propaganda in 
the mails, of fugitive slave rendition, of the regula- 
tion of interstate slave trading and of slavery and 
the slave trade in the District of Columbia, all de- 
pended for determination upon the sectional control 
of the Senate ; and the issue of slavery in the terri- 
tories obtained its crucial and fundamental charac- 
ter because and only because it involved the great 
problem of maintaining or upsetting the senatorial 
balance. 

This fact will bear repeating: That the South 
alone stood in danger from a rough-shod m-ajority. 
The North could not possibly have had a reasonable 
fear of aggression by a crushing block of Southern 
votes. There was no political solidarity in the North 
because its people were too secure in their interests 
to feel the need of forming a sectional phalanx. 
In not a few instances, however, the politicians 
raised the cry of wolf when there was no wolf. As 
is not unusual in American politics, they used fal- 
lacious arguments as readily as sound ones. For ex- 
ample, in a Massachusetts memorial of 1819, Daniel 
Webster denounced the extension of slaveholding ter- 
ritory on the ground that it would increase the 
slave population and therefore increase the pro- 
slavery membership in the Federal House of Rep- 
resentatives. Surely Webster did not himself be- 
lieve that slaves carried westward could swell the 
population of the new states without diminishing 
that of the old. To frighten the worshippers of 
nationality into attentiveness to their propaganda, 
the Garrisonians brought out the stage-dragon of 
secession from the political property room, peti- 
tioning Congress in 1842 and 1844 to dissolve the 



396 POLITICAL HISTORY. 

Union and declaring disruption preferable to a con- 
tinuance in a union with sinful slaveholders. 

Anti-Slavery Societies. 

The history of the slavery issue in the period of 
bitter wrangling is largely concerned with the doings 
of the propagandist societies. Some recent critic 
of manners has remarked that when three Americans 
find they have a common origin, similar character- 
istics or kindred opinions, they promptly adopt a 
constitution and by-laws, elect officers and begin to 
extend the membership. Then comes the federation 
of clubs; the establishment of an organ; and the 
holding of conventions for jubilation and the adop- 
tion of a programme. This great habit of found- 
ing societies for any and all purposes hardly pre- 
vailed either in Europe or America before the middle 
of the Eighteenth century. In the Revolutionary 
period the custom grew frequent, of launching new 
theories of social fundamentals upon short notice, 
and founding societies to support each "ism." In 
the history of club movements since that time, aboli- 
tionism plays a leading role. 

The names assumed by the several groups of 
anti-slavery societies did not always denote the spe- 
cial nature of their policies. Between 1774 and 
1792, a large number of so-called abolition societies 
were founded in America, but their purpose was 
merely to promote the gradual decline of slavery, 
and they nearly all disbanded in discouragement 
at the reactionary trend of public opinion about the 
close of the century. The British "Society for Abol- 
ishing the Slave Trade," founded in 1787, accom- 
plished the abolition of the traffic in British vessels; 
and, furthermore, it founded a free-negro colony 
at Sierre Leone, which in spite of its own ill success 
suggested the scheme of colonization to the problem- 



FEDERAL POLITICS. 397 

solvers in the United States. The ''American 
Colonization Society" was launched in 1816 for the 
purpose of promoting harmony as well as for re- 
lieving the negroes. The colony of Liberia had many 
vicissitudes and little success, and the society shortly 
fell into innocuous desuetude. 

The Garrisonian Ag^itation. 

In 1830-31 the preceding movements were over- 
shadowed by the Garrisonian agitation for the im- 
mediate, universal and uncompensated abolition of 
slavery. With the Liberator as its organ and a 
widely extended federation of ''anti-slavery soci- 
eties" promoting it, root-and-branch abolitionism 
forced itself into immediate consideration as the 
most serious menace to the established institutions 
of the South. The tone of this Garrisonian propa- 
ganda may be gathered from the following "texts" 
selected from contemporary writings, and printed 
with approval at the head of the editorial columns 
of the Liberator. The two here given are from the 
writings of the Rev. George Bourne and were printed 
in the issues of December 24 and 31, 1831, respec- 
tively : 

"XVI I. 'We assert, that no slaveholder is innocent; that he is an 
unjust, cruel, criminal kidnapper, who is guilty of the most atrocious 
transgression against God and man; that it is the most infatuated de- 
lusion for such men to believe, or the most impudent hpyocrisy in them 
to profess themselves innocent; * * * that the general manage- 
ment of the slave is a complication of indescribable barbarity; * * *'" 

"XVIII. '* * * The system is so entirely corrupt that it admits of 
no cure but by a total and immediate abolition. For a gradual eman- 
cipation is a virtual recognition of the right, and estabUshes the rectitude 
of the practice. If it be just for one moment, it is hallowed forever; and 
if it be inequitable, not a day should it be tolerated.'" 

The Radical Political Abolitionists. 
The early Garrisonian movement fell in a time 
when there was much prophesying and much follow- 
ing of prophets. There were agitators for Jack- 



39S POLITICAL HISTORY. 

sonian Democracy, the extension of the suffrage, 
anti-Masonry, -vromen's rights, Owenism, and many 
other legal and social reforms, for Unitarianism, 
Transcendentalism, Mormonism, and the Campbell- 
ite movement, as well as for the abolition of negro 
slavery. With such a clamoring of prophets, there 
was sure to be schism in many of the reform groups. 
The principal division which befell the Abolition- 
ists was upon the question of participating in or 
abstaining from party politics. Garrison impressed 
his closest followers with the notion that the U. S. 
constitution was a league with Hell and they avoided 
the contamination of the ballot box. The faction led 
by Bimey, Gerrit Smith and the Tappans, some- 
what more practical in their methods, broke away 
in 1838, founded a separate federation of societies 
and constructed party machinery for operation in 
Federal politics. Birney, nominated by the Liberty 
Party for President, received 7,059 votes in 1840 
and 62,300 in 1844. In 1848 the Liberty party 
merged with the Van Buren machine and the result- 
ant Free Soil party cast 291,263 votes for Van 
Buren ; but in 1852, with a platform denouncing slav- 
ery as '*a sin against God and a crime against man," 
the vote for their presidential candidate, T. P. Hale, 
fell to 156,149. After 1854 the political abolition- 
ists went into the Republican party, which sup- 
planted the Free Soil organization. However, they 
retained their federation of local societies and in 
some degree their independent political machinery, 
and thereby exerted a powerful influence on the 
Republican party and greatly heightened the effect 
of their menace to the South. 

The transactions of a convention held in 1855 
show the attitude and policy involved. The official 
documents of the convention were published with 
the title: "Proceedings of the Convention of the 



FEDERAL POLITICS. 399 

Radical Political Abolitionists, Held at Syracuse, 
N. Y., June 26th, 27th and 28th, 1855. Slavery an 
Outlaw and Forbidden by the Constitution" (N. Y., 
1856). At the beginning of this pamphlet is printed 
the call for the convention, issued the preceding 
April, signed by Lewis Tappan, William Goodell, 
Gerrit Smith, Frederick Douglass, and others. It 
recites that the Whig, Democratic and Know-Nothing 
parties, by reason of their composition, will not at- 
tack slavery; that the Free Soilers oppose the exten- 
sion of slaveholding but deny the right of the Fed- 
eral government to touch slavery in the states or 
to admit the right of the slaveholders to claim every 
state government as their servant in slave-catching ; 
and that the Garrisonian abolitionists, while laboring 
to abolish slavery, are unwilling to employ political 
power to this end and even seek to bring about 
secession and leave to the slaveholders their power 
of oppression. The ''Liberty Party," however, 
which the convention is called to reorganize, "is 
the only political party in the land which insists 
on the right and duty to wield the political power 
of the nation for the overthrow of every part and 
parcel of American slavery. ' ' Next follow a declara- 
tion of principles, an exposition of the duty of the 
Federal government to abolish slavery, an address 
to the people of the United States, a platform and 
the minutes of the convention. The "declaration" 
contends that the "Constitutional Fathers" did not 
establish slavery by law and that if they had done 
so it would be the duty of the present generation, 
to use the constitution accordmg to its ''righteous" 
language and against 'their unrighteous intentions. 
(All present italics are those of the original). It 
declares : 

"We believe slave holding to be an unsurpassed crime, and we hold it 
to be the sacred duty of civil government to suppress crime. * * * 
We consent to no dissolution [of the Union] which would leave the slave 



400 POLITICAL HISTOEY. 

in his chains. * * * The ground which we occupy is to us holy 
ground; the ground of the true and of the right. * * * marked out 
by the divine law of loving our neighbors as ourselves. * * ♦ We 
call on all the friends of pure religion and of our common country to 
come to the rescue and cast in their lot with us in this great struggle. 
* * * We are resolved to go forward." 

A typical item from the convention's exposition 
of the government's duty is the following: Slavery 
is an attainder because it imposes disabilities on 
the child on account of the condition of the parent; 
the Federal constitution forbids bills of attainder; 
therefore it forbids the maintenance of slavery. The 
exposition concludes with the contention that Con- 
gress may abolish slavery in the states by virtue 
of the general welfare clause in the constitution. 
In their address to the people of the United States, 
the imprisonment by Southern states of persons 
inciting slaves to escape is denounced and a claim 
of immunity for such agitators is made on the 
ground that citizens of each state are entitled to 
all the constitutional privileges of the citizens of 
the several states. Fugitive slave laws are declared 
an outrage because slavery is an outrage, and such 
laws should be trampled underfoot as unlawful be- 
cause they are a part of the slaveholding system. 
In conclusion, the formal resolution or platform 
adopted by the convention set forth: (1) That ex- 
perience has proved there is no way of getting rid 
of the evils incidental to slavery except by ridding 
the country of slavery itself; (2) That the party 
rejects as useless all schemes for limiting, localizing 
or ameliorating slavery, and all measures which do 
not look directly to the immediate and unconditional 
repression of slavery in all parts of the country; 
(3) That it opposes the exportation of colored per- 
sons; 13. ''That while we believe much in moral 
suasion, as persuading to efficient action, we also 
insist that without such action it loses its power;" 



FEDERAL POLITICS. 401 

20. That the party will use every effort to annihilate 
the abominable spirit of caste against the colored 
people. 

The Trend of Southern Reaction, 1830 to 1860. 

The platform of this convention expressed what 
the Southerners had long and anxiously dreaded as 
the real principles and policies of the Abolitionists. 
The rise of such radical propaganda naturally pro- 
duced a reaction of sentiment in the slaveholding 
sections, the stages of which are recorded in numer- 
ous contemporary utterances. Professor Dew's 
famous essay on slavery, 1833, was rather a guide 
to public opinion than an index of it; but that the 
ideas expressed by Dew were common to thinking 
men is shown by the following editorial on the sub- 
ject of the Liberator, published in the Federal Union, 
of Milledgeville, Ga., a leading organ of Southern 
sentiment, in its issue of Jan. 12, 1832 : 

"We censure no man for an enthusiastic devotion to the abstract doc- 
trines of universal liberty, and perfect equality. They are beautiful and 
just in theory: but they are impracticable in the present state of the 
world. In a society constituted of the best materials, and most happily 
organized, inequalities in the conditions of different men will of neceseity 
be produced, by differences in their talent and industry, and in the for- 
tuitous circumstances which befall them in life. * * * in the pres- 
ent condition of the Southern states, a condition for which no living men 
are accountable, the propriety of a general emancipation of their slaves 
cannot for a moment be admitted by the wildest visionary. To release 
hundreds of thousands of human beings from those restraints under 
which alone they have been accustomed to labour; to disgorge on society 
hundreds of thousands of paupers, who are averse to labour, would pro- 
duce scenes of indolence and confusion, and wretchedness, and ruin, such 
as have never been witnessed on earth. But the paper published at 
Boston, whose name we have placed at the head of this article, has not 
the apology of a generous devotion to this philanthropic but impractica- 
ble theory. It breathes a spirit of rancorous hostihty to the white popu- 
lation of the South, instead of that expansive benevolence which seeks 
the welfare of the whole human family. It aims not, by the arts of 
peace, by the voice of reason and of virtue, to improve the condition of 
mankind; but it strives to kindle the revengeful passions of our colored 
population, and to incite them to the most fatal convulsions. We do not 
beUeve that the Liberator will produce any effect; but if it exert any in- 
Vol. 4—26. 



402 POLITICAL HISTORY. 

fiuence over the white population, it will be to make them more suspi- 
cious of their slaves, more watchful, more stern and more inexorable in 
their public policy and their domestic government: if it exert any influ- 
ence over our slaves, it will be to increase and foment their discontents, 
and to goad them to insurrections and massacres, which cannot faU to be 
visited with severe and direful retribution on their own heads. * * * 

The phase into which the opinions of the thought- 
ful slaveholders had developed in 1840 is exemplified 
in the following extracts from the letters of Dabney, 
in T. C. Johnson's Robert Lewis Dahney, pages 
67, 68 : 

" * * * Before the abolitionists began to meddle with our affairs, 
with which they had no business, I remember that it was a common 
opinion that domestic slavery was at least injudicious, as far as the hap- 
piness of the master was concerned. I do believe that if these mad 
fanatics had let us alone, in twenty years we should have made Virginia a 
free state. At it is, their unauthorized attempts to strike off the fetters 
of our slaves have but ri vetted them on the faster * * * the change 
of public opinion in the South, favorable to the continuation of slavery, 
doubtless arose partly from free discussion. We have investigated the 
subject, and we find emancipation much more dangerous than we had 
before imagined. Who knows but that this uproar of the Abolitionist, 
which has almost broken the ties of our political union, and thrown back 
the poor slave from his hope of approaching emancipation at least half a 
century, which, in short, has been to our view productive of nothing but 
evil, may have been designed by Providence as a check upon our im- 
prudent liberality. ♦ * * But yet I do not believe that we ought to 
rest contented that slavery should exist forever, in its present form. It 
is, as a system, liable to the most erroneous abuses. * * * While 
abolition is impossible, yet I believe much might be done to modify the 
system and remove abuses (of which the greatest is the domestic slave 
trade), while we retain the good parts of it." 

As the years passed and the abolitionist denuncia- 
tions grew more bitter, and tlie Northern public 
appeared to incline toward the adoption of the anti- 
slavery cause, the tone of Southern public opinion 
grew more decidedly reactionary. The dread of 
social wreck and rapine, as the result of radical 
abolition, so greatly outweighed the ills of the exist- 
ing system that by contrast slavery seemed a posi- 
tive good. An index to the progress of this doctrine 
is the essay written in 1845 by James H. Hammond, 
a leading South Carolina politician, in which he op- 



FEDERAL POLITICS. 403 

posed the resort to abstract theory, favored the ex- 
clusion of the rabble from political power, compared 
the condition of Southern slaves favorably with that 
of English and Northern laborers, and praised the 
slavery system as developing the best in the negroes 
without lowering the character of the whites. Even 
so well poised a man as Calhoun adopted this argu- 
ment of the "positive good" of slavery; and where 
Calhoun led, tens of thousands followed. For cam- 
paign purposes all qualifying clauses were dropped 
and slavery was proclaimed a sound institution 
which ought to be maintained against all attacks, 
permanently if need be, or at the least until quieter 
times should return and the Southern people be able 
to consult peacably with themselves and remodel 
their adjustments with the negro population. 

The calamitious nature of the prospect for the 
South in case the abolitionists should commit the 
Federal government to their policies was seen vividly 
by Calhoun; and the course of developments to be 
expected in that dread event was described by him 
in a memorial to the Southern people in 1849, signed 
by a large number of the Southern delegation in 
Congress. When read with our present knowledge 
of what actually occurred in the reconstruction 
period, the correctness of Calhoun's prophecy seems 
little short of supernatural. An excerpt from the 
address follows {Calhoun's Works, Vol. 6, pp. 310, 
311): 

" ♦ * * If it [emancipation in the South] ever should be effected, 
it will be through the agency of the Federal Government, controlled by 
the dominant power of the Northern states of the Confederacy, against 
the resistance and struggle of the Southern. It can then only be effected 
by the prostration of the white race; and that would'necessarily engender 
the bitterest feelings of hostility between them and the North. But the 
reverse would be the case between the blacks of the South and the people 
of the North. Owing their emancipation to them they would regard 
them as friends, guardians, and patrons, and centre, accordingly, all 
their sympathy in them. The people of the North would not fail to 



404 POLITICAL HISTOBY. 

reciprocate and to favor them, instead of the whites. Under the influ- 
ence of such feelings, and impelled by fanaticism and love of power, they 
would not stop at emancipation. Another step would be taken, to raise 
them to a political and social equality with their former owTiere, by giv- 
ing them the right of voting and holding public offices under the Federal 
Government. * * * But when once raised to an equality, they 
would become the fast political associates of the North, acting and voting 
with them on all questions, and by this perfect union between them, 
holding the white race at the South in complete subjection. The blacks, 
and the profligate whites that might unite with them, would become the 
principal recipients of Federal offices and patronage, and would, in con- 
sequence, be raised above the whites of the South in the political and 
social scale. We would, in a word, change conditions with them, a deg- 
radation greater than has yet fallen to the lot of a free and enlightened 
people. * * *" 

The final stage of policy in public affairs, among 
men who were more ready in action than in thought 
and foresight, is shown by the following editorial 
from the Montgomery, Ala., Mail, reprinted with 
comments in the Atlanta Intelligencer of Jan. 11, 
1860: 

" ' We observe that meetings of citizens are being held in many of the 
counties of the state of Georgia for the appointment of Vigilance Com- 
mittees and to adopt measures for the protection of their respective com- 
munities against abolitionist emissaries. The last Americiis Republican 
contains the proceedings of two such meetings, one held in that city on 
the 22d and the other at Preston, in Webster county, on the 21st. Both 
meetings adopted appropriate resolutions and appointed Committees of 
Vigilance, embracing many of the leading citizens of these counties.' 

"We clip the above from tlie Montgomery, Ala., Mail. The exigen- 
cies of the times demand that the strictest vigilance should be observed 
in regard to all suspicious characters. We have among us a host of 
drummers, lecturers and others, travelling through the country, many 
of whom are honest and trustworthy. Others are wolves in sheep's 
clothing, sent among us to spy out our liberties and sow the seeds of dis- 
union and insubordination among a certain portion of our population. 
Let all such be strictly watched, and if found guilty of interfering with 
our local institutions let tar and feathers or hemp be their reward." 

The Aggressive Strategy of the Abolitionists. 

In the three decades of embittered contention over 
slavery, the root-and-brauch abolitionists, in addi- 
tion to their activity at the polls and on the floor of 
Congress, developed four principal methods of as- 



FEDERAL POLITICS. 405 

sault on the slavery system: They scattered in- 
cendiary doctrines among the negroes; they peti- 
tioned Congress for hostile legislation; they aided 
fugitives to escape re-capture ; they colonized voters 
in doubtful territory. 

For many years before the radical agitation be- 
gan, the slaveholding commonwealths had main- 
tained laws penalizing any incitement of the slaves 
to revolt or to flee from service, and it was obviously 
dangerous for abolitionists to agitate within the 
reach of such statutes. The rise of emergencies 
nearly always led promptly to the stiffening of these 
regulations; and such changes in the black codes 
usually brought outcries from the abolitionists of 
the North. An instance is the South Carolina legis- 
lation of 1822 and 1823 (impelled by the occurrence 
of the Denmark Vesey plot), which provided for the 
more stringent policing of free persons of color and 
forbade, under penalty, the entrance of such persons 
into the state. The act of 1823 specially provided 
that if any ship should enter a port of South Caro- 
lina with a free person of color on board, such person 
should at once be put in jail and kept there until 
the ship was ready to sail. The abolitionists, of 
course, denounced this legislation. By dint of per- 
sistence, they persuaded the Massachusetts legis- 
lature, in 1836, to send Samuel Hoar to South Caro- 
lina as a commissioner to bring a case into the 
courts and carry it on appeal to the Supreme Court 
of the United States, and thereby have it annulled 
as unconstitutional on the ground of its being a 
violation of the rights of the citizens of the several 
states. On reaching Charleston, Hoar found Tiis 
mission so obnoxious to the populace that in fear 
of mob violence he departed. 



406 POLITICAL HISTORY 

Incendiary Documents in the Mails. 

There were occasioned reports of the arrest of 
suspected abolitionists in the South, but before the 
day of John Brown at Harper's Ferry very few 
of the agitators really risked their own persons. 
The black codes made personal agitation among the 
slaves perilous. Their principal field of work was 
the circulation of printed matter; and this brought 
up the issue of incendiary documents in the mails. 
From 1830 onward there were occasional commo- 
tions in the South over the discovery of incendiary 
publications in transit. Most of these were simply 
newspapers with wood cuts of negroes under the 
lash, in chains or on the auction block, together with 
declarations against the sin of slaveholding. The 
publication which caused the greatest excitement was 
the pamphlet Appeal, by the negro David Walker, 
printed in 1829, urging the slaves to rise in insurrec- 
tion. In July, 1835, self-appointed committees in a 
number of places seized all the abolitionist publica- 
tions in the local postoffices, usually with the con- 
sent of the postmasters, and destroyed them in 
public bonfires. The Charleston postmaster re- 
quested the New York postmaster to stop forward- 
ing such matter, and after a futile appeal to the 
anti-slavery societies to stop putting their docu- 
ments in the mails for the South, the matter went 
to the postmaster-general, Amos Kendall. Kendall 
refused to issue formal instructions in the premises 
but sent the Charleston postmaster a virtual ap- 
proval of the policy of censoring printed matter in 
the mails. In his annual message President Jack- 
son soon after advised Congress to enact a law that 
publications regarding slavery should not be deliv- 
ered by the postoffice in states prohibiting their 
circulation. In 1836 Calhoun introduced a bill to 
restrict the postoffice in circulating incendiary pub- 



FEDERAL POLITICS. 407 

lications, but it was defeated in the Senate. Aided 
by a willingness of the local postmasters to search, 
and censor the mails, informal vigilance by the citi- 
zens continued to be the only check maintained upon 
the circulation of the abolitionist publications. 

Anti-Slavery Petitions in Congress. 

Their organization into societies enabled the anti- 
slavery people to meet the large expenses of print- 
ing and postage without heavily burdening indi- 
viduals, and in many other ways aided the radical 
agitation. These societies particularly promoted 
the work of the "Underground Railroad" and facili- 
tated the preparation of petitions to Congress and 
their signature with hundreds of thousands of 
names. 

The petitions episode was one of insignificant be- 
ginnings but of conspicuous development and large 
consequences. In December, 1831, John Quincy 
Adams, then a new member of Congress, introduced 
into the House a batch of petitions praying for 
the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, 
saying at the time that he acted merely as the agent 
of his constituents and deprecated the purpose of 
the petitions as leading to ill will and no good 
result. These and other similar petitions following 
were referred to the committee on the District, 
which reported unfavorably on the large number 
given to their consideration. After February, 1833, 
there was a perfect hail of these memorials and to 
relieve the conunittee of its burden the House began 
to lay them upon the table as received. To system- 
atize this procedure, in the spring of 1836 the House 
resolved that thereafter all petitions referring to 
slavery or the abolition thereof should be laid upon 
the table without discussion or publication. About 
the same time the Senate resolved to answer every 



408 POLITICAL HISTORY. 

petition with a set formula: "That the prayer of 
the petition be not granted." Henry A. Wise, of 
Virginia, explained the grounds of the Southern 
attitude in the House in 1835: 

" Slavery, interwoven with our very political existence, is guaranteed 
by our Constitution, and its consequences must be borne by our Northern 
brethren as resulting from our system of government, and they cannot 
attack the institution of slavery without attacking the institutions of 
our country, our safety and welfare." 

The House and Senate rules shutting off debate 
were not adopted without a contest. The quarrel in 
the House was particularly hot and stubborn. At 
an early stage James Buchanan made a prophetic 
remark, far above his usual standard: 

" Let it be once understood that the sacred right of petition and the 
cause of the abolitionists must rise or must fall together, and the conse- 
quences may be fatal." 

The work of John Quincy Adams was to accom- 
plish this union of anti-slavery doctrine and the 
right-of-petition in public opinion. The popular 
right of petition was not really endangered at the 
time; but Adams saw fit to believe that it was, and 
he justly won the title of "Old Man Eloquent" in 
his denunciations of the "gag-laws," and every 
stroke made against the policy of restricting debate 
was effectually a stroke in aid of the abolitionist 
agitators. Early in the course of the debate Henry 
Clay had contended that it was wiser to leave con- 
gressional discussion free as an escape valve for 
popular excitement; and several representatives 
from the lower South voiced the same opinion. The 
director of the gag-law was Calhoun, for once in 
his life short-sighted. Everyone that he could con- 
trol he wlii])ped into line, whether Southerner or 
Northener, and thereby made it appear that a pro- 
slavery phalanx was overriding Northern liberties. 

In forcing the adoption of the gag-rules Calhoun 
won a tactical victory similar to that of George III. 



FEDEEAL POLITICS. 409 

in excluding John Wilkes from a seat in the House 
of Commons. When public sentiment finally over- 
whelmed the king's obstruction and seated Wilkes, 
it promptly became evident that Wilkes had no dis- 
turbing message to utter. The gag-rules were 
proven futile before they were discarded. The aboli- 
tionists caused the state governments of Massachu- 
setts and Vermont to present anti-slavery memorials 
which could not be treated with silent disapproval; 
and the anti-slavery Congressman used any and 
every occasion to drag in denunciations of slave- 
holding and all the pro-slavery policies. Joshua 
Giddings was censured by the House in 1842 for 
violating the gag-rule. Giddings promptly resigned 
his seat and was as promptly re-elected by his Ohio 
constituents. The gag-law had been renewed in the 
rules of each new Congress, but by constantly de- 
creasing majorities. At length in 1844 Adams suc- 
ceeded in striking it from the rules of the House and 
it was never revived. 

So long as the gag-rules were in effect, the soci- 
eties kept up a hea\y bombardment of Congress 
with their petitions. As soon as they were removed, 
the petitions against slavery were found to be 
hardly worth while as affording substance for dis- 
cussion. The bombardment promptly flagged. In 
1853, with little protest, the House provided in a 
new set of rules that no petitions on any subject 
should thereafter be presented in the open House 
but they must be deposited with the clerk and by 
him handed to the proper committees. From that 
day to this petitions have never come before the 
House at all except upon the report of a committee, 
and no one has found a grievance in this later gag- 
rule. As to the abolitionists, after 1844 they lost 
much of their interest in the right of petition and 



410 POLITICAL HISTORY. 

diverted to other phases of their policy the public 
favor the gag-law episode had won them. 

The Fugitive Slave Problem. 

The problem of interstate and intersectional ren- 
dition of fugitive slaves was one of the most delicate 
which ever confronted American legislators and ex- 
ecutives. The duty of Congress and the several 
states, imder the constitution, was to prevent the 
escape of slaves across the state lines and to pro- 
vide for their rendition to their lawful owners upon 
demand. This obligation was agreed to by every 
state upon entering the Union, and the states could 
not legitimately be relieved of it except by amend- 
ment to the constitution. On the other hand, the 
laws must safeguard free persons from being kid- 
napped and reduced to slavery under pretence of 
their being fugitives from service. As to the vesting 
of power and responsibility in the premises, the con- 
stitution was vague. Unless the Federal and state 
governments worked out a harmonious and efficient 
system, there would be perpetual wrangling over 
constantly recurring issues. Furthermore, all this 
delicate adjustment must be made and maintained in 
the face of any clash of theories or policies which 
might arise between the states or sections. The con- 
stitution, as an interstate compact, left no discretion 
to Congress or the state governments as regards 
fugitive rendition, and permitted little readjustment 
to fit changing ideas and needs. 

In the first years under the constitution a clash of 
policy as regards rendition and kidnapping arose 
iDetween the governments of Virginia and Pennsjd- 
vania. When appeal was made to President Wash- 
ington for sup]iort he referred the general problem 
to Congress. The result was the enactment of the 
law of 1793. This act empowered the owner or his 



FEDEBAL POLITICS. 411 

agent to seize an alleged interstate fugitive slave, 
permitted ownership to be proven by an affidavit of 
the captor before practically any court near the 
scene of the capture, and required the magistrate 
thereupon to issue a certificate giving title. It also 
penalized the concealment of a fugitive or any inter- 
ference with his capture, by a fine of $500. The fun- 
damental defect of this law was that it entrusted the 
administration of Federal legislation to state offi- 
cials over whom the Federal government had no con- 
trol. The act soon proved unsatisfactory on both 
sides. It did not effectually prevent the kidnapping 
of free negroes, nor did it insure the interstate ren- 
dition of fugitives. Public opinion in the free states 
hindered the law's operation. The courts of the free 
states disrelished the duty of enforcing an obnoxious 
Federal law; and by technicalities, mainly hinging 
on the writ of habeas corpus, many difficulties were 
thrown in the way of slave rendition. An effort 
made in 1817 to increase the efficiency of rendition 
was defeated, and no change in the statute was made 
until 1850. 

state Interferences With Rendition. 

As the years passed the difficulties increased. 
Slave prices in the lower South rose to very high 
levels, and the kidnapping of free negroes in the 
border states became extremely tempting to men of 
lawless inclination. On the other hand, the growth 
of anti-slavery sentiment in the North increased the 
popular activity in hindering rendition, and even in 
defying the law outright. Some of this obstruction 
was informal and either secret or tumultuous, while 
some of it took the deliberate form of state enact- 
ments professing to supplement the Federal statute, 
but reallj' thwarting its provisions and purpose. An 
Indiana law of 1817, for example, forbade rendition 
wHhout jury trial. A Pennsylvania statute of 1825-6 



412 POLITICAL HISTORY. 

debarred the evidence of the owner or his agent in 
proving title. And a New York act of 1840 went so 
far as to require jnry trial, provide the alleged fugi- 
tive with counsel and levy damages of $100 upon 
the captor for the benefit of the alleged fugitive in 
case of failure to prove title. The validity of such 
acts was tested before the United States Supreme 
Court in the case of Prigg vs. Pennsylvania, 1842. 
The decision of the court was that the Pennsylvania 
act was unconstitutional and that legislation on the 
subject lay within the exclusive scope of Congress ; 
but that Congress could not impose the duty of ex- 
ecuting Federal laws upon state officials. This de- 
cision was not a crushing reverse for the aboli- 
tionists. They promptly caused the Massachusetts 
and Vermont legislatures to enact laws, 1843, pro- 
hibiting state officials from executing the fugitive 
slave law and forbade the use of state jails for the 
detention of fugitives. Pennsylvania and Ehode 
Island passed similar acts in 1847 and 1848. 

The Underground Railroad. 

Meanwhile the abolitionists were also systema- 
tizing their work of persuading slaves to flee from 
service and assisting them to make good their escape. 
The "Underground Railroad" developed secretly, 
enlisting many "conductors" and "station mas- 
ters" in its unpaid and illegal service and establish- 
ing a network of routes by which fleeing negroes, 
once having crossed the Maryland border or the 
Ohio River, were expedited in their flight across the 
Northern states. On their journey they were wel- 
comed only as transients on their way to Canada, 
where they might obtain a j^ermanent though not a 
hospitable asylum. It has been estimated that be- 
tween 1830 and 1850 as many as 50,000 slaves were 
successfully spirited out of danger of recapture 



FEDERAL POLITICS. 418 

through the services of this "Underground Rail- 
road." In a few cases the agents of this somewhat 
informal organization were caught by officials of 
the law and prosecuted. In 1841, Burr, Work and 
Thompson were seized in Missouri and sentenced 
to twelve years' imprisonment for inciting slaves to 
escape. In 1840, John Van Zandt was detected aid- 
ing the escape of fugitive slaves in Ohio and suffered 
judgment of $1,200 as damages to the owner of the 
slaves. An appeal to the United States Supreme 
Court failed to reverse this judgment, 1847; but an 
appeal to public sentiment in Ohio made Van Zandt 
a martyr and a hero. The temper of the abolitionists 
and their friends was defiant of the law, and every 
appeal of the slaveholders for legal protection 
strengthened the degree and widened the spread of 
the feeling of outrage in the North. 

The Rendition Act of 1850. 

By 1850, the paralysis of the rendition system had 
reached such a stage that a revision of the Federal 
law was imperative. This problem was but one of a 
large group of sectional issues to be dealt with at 
the time; and as the result of a sort of bargain be- 
tween the sections, the South secured a more efficient 
rendition law in exchange for her consent to the ad- 
mission of California with a non-slavery constitu- 
tion and to the prohibition of the slave trade in the 
District of Columbia. In this bargain the South was 
the loser, because the concession it received could 
be nullified by conspiracies and tumults among the 
Northern people, while the concessions it yielded 
were of a sort which practically could not be nulli- 
fied or recalled. 

The final act of 1850 for the interstate rendition of 
fugitive slaves repeated the provisions of the act of 
1793 so far as concerned the acceptance of the affi- 



414 POLITICAL HISTORY. 

davit of the claimant as sufficient proof of owner- 
ship ; but it made the innovation of transferring the 
jurisdiction in fugitive slave cases from state courts 
to Federal courts and commissioners appointed by 
them; and it made United States marshals respon- 
sible under a penalty of $1,000 for the execution of 
warrants under the statute and for the custody of 
captives. It debarred the testimony of the alleged 
fugitives in the trials; it made the seal of the court 
such conclusive evidence of title that captives were 
deprived of resort to the writ of habeas corpus ; and 
it fixed the fees of the magistrate officiating at $5 in 
case the decision were in favor of the negro and at 
$10 if in favor of the claimant. 

"Uncle Tom's Cabin." 

The act as a whole manifestly and professedly 
made the United States government an agent of the 
slaveholders in recapturing their slaves. As such it 
was not out of keeping with the established Federal 
constitution and laws; and yet as a practical policy 
its wisdom was doubtful at best. In fact, the opera- 
tions of the "Underground Railroad" were stimu- 
lated by the act, and riots began to occur upon sun- 
dry occasions for the rescue of slaves from arrest 
and rendition. Garrison's Liberator and the Na- 
tional Era of Washington published reports of all 
such and gave conspicuous praise to the lawbreakers. 
There was a huge crop of pamphlets, the greatest of 
which by far was that by Harriet Beecher Stowe, 
Uncle Tom's Cabin, first published in the National 
Era in 1851, and then issued in book form to the ex- 
tent of nearly 500,000 copies within the decade. 
Multitudes of readers who could not have been 
reached by politicians or by frankly political pamph- 
lets eagerly drank in Mrs. Stowe 's emotional de- 
scription of the negroes as a highly religious and 



FEDERAL POLITICS. 415 

moral people, who differed from high-grade white 
men and women, not in intelligence nor in sentiment, 
but merely in the color of their skin ; and these mul- 
titudes gathered by inference that the fugitive slave 
law was an unexampled atrocity, worthy of no man's 
countenance. Whatever might have been said in 
reply could obtain no hearing from the thousands 
who became imbued with Mrs. Stowe's philosophy. 
If slaveholders admitted that their system had its 
evils, they were denoimced for not overthrowing it 
at once and forever; if they denied its evils, they 
were damned as incorrigible tyrants who must them- 
selves be trampled underfoot with all their works, in 
the advancement of the cause of liberty. State en- 
actments impeding the execution of the Federal law, 
more drastic than those characteristic of the pre- 
ceding decade, were made bj'- Vermont, Ehode 
Island and Connecticut in 1854, by Maine and Massa- 
chusetts and Michigan in 1855, by Wisconsin and 
Kansas in 1858, Ohio in 1859, and Pennsylvania in 
1860. These acts required testimony by two wit- 
nesses to prove ownership, provided gratuitous legal 
services by state officers on behalf of negroes in cus- 
tody, and penalized the unsuccessful claimants of 
alleged fugitives. An anti-rendition machine grew 
up for the purpose of liberating slaves and not 
wholly without the purpose of exasperating and 
harassing the slaveholders. 

The Fire-Eaters. 

Had the loss of wealth involved in the escape of 
slave property been the sole issue, the South might 
have gained its end better by maintaining a heavy 
frontier police all along its borders. But the policy 
of enforcing the maintenance of a Federal rendition 
system had its source more in sectional political 
friction than in economic considerations. This is 



416 POLITICAL HISTORY. 

evidenced not only by the course of the debates, but 
also by the fact that the cause was more vigorously 
championed by men from the lower South, which lost 
very few slaves, than by the spokesmen from the 
border states, from which slaves were more or less 
constantly escaping across the line. 

By the middle forties Yancey, Rhett, Quitman, 
and other Southern extremists, the ''fire-eaters," 
had already reached the belief that the permanence 
of the Union on a basis of equity to the slaveholding 
South was impossible. They believed it only a ques- 
tion of time when the North would become thor- 
oughly tyrannical over the outvoted South and 
would destroy all effective provision for Southern 
self-government. They accordingly thought it the 
soundest policy to arouse the people and hasten the 
final arbitrament. With the fire-eaters the insistence 
upon rendition was part of a provocative program. 
With more moderate men the same policy was 
approved, in partially blind resentment, as a show 
of resistence to Northern aggression. To state, as 
do most of the standard historians, whether ex- 
pressly or by innuendo, that this and the policy of 
slavery extension in the territories were gratuitous 
aggressions of the South, would show a grievously 
biased reading of the documents. 

In 1858 the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was tested 
before the Supreme Court of the United States in 
the case of Ableman vs. Booth. The court unani- 
mously decided that the act was constitutional and 
the state attempts to nullify it unconstitutional and 
of no effect. But by this time the agitation of the 
people had passed the stage where court decisions 
could be of any avail except as contributing material 
for partisan arguments. 



FEDERAL POLITICS. 417 

The Issue of Slavery in the Territories. 

The final crux of sectional antagonism came in the 
issue of the territorial expansion of the slavery sys- 
tem. The vital character of this problem had not 
been perceived at the time of the Northwest Terri- 
tory Ordinance, 1787, and in fact did not appear 
vividly until the Missouri Question was stumbled 
upon by the politicians. At that time such a vista of 
future conflict was revealed by the discussion that 
all parties hastily agreed to patch up a settlement 
and shut the frightful prospect from view. This 
compromise of 1820 admitted Missouri as a slave- 
holding state, but prohibited slavery in all the rest 
of the territory of the Louisiana Purchase north of 
latitude 36° 30'. 

Up to this time states had been admitted to the 
Union in pairs, so as to maintain the Senate bal- 
ance between the ''slave" and "free" states; but 
after the lapse of two decades more the prospect for 
the South became very gloomy in this regard, and 
her champions began to grow desperate. After the 
admission of Arkansas in 1836 there was no more 
territory but Florida for pro-slavery colonization, 
while the non-slavery preserves on the other hand 
embraced the immense Northwest, stretching from 
Illinois and Missouri to faraway Oregon. The 
acuteness of the situation was temporarily relieved 
by the Texan annexation in 1845; but Texas, huge 
as she is, was not adequate to maintain the equi- 
librium. 

The Wilmot Proviso. 

The definitive struggle was opened by the "Wilmot 
Proviso, interrupted by the Compromise of 1850, 
and reopened as an irrepressible conflict by the 
Kansas-Nebraska act. Incidental were the filibus- 
tering expedition for Cuban annexation in 1850, the 
Ostend Manifesto of 1856 urging the seizure of Cuba 

Vol. 4—27. 



418 POLITICAL HISTORY. 

by the United States government, the proposals in 
Southern commercial conventions of 1855-60 for re- 
opening the Africa slave trade, and the Dred Scott 
decision and dictum of 1857, by which the problem- 
solvers on the supreme bench tried to remove the 
territorial issue from politics. The first three of 
these projects were supported only by a few extrem- 
ists in each instance, such as Quitman in the first 
case. Mason and Soule in the second, and Spratt and 
De Bow in the third. The project of reopening the 
African trade was intended to enable the South to 
colonize more territory with actual slaveholders, 
but it was everywhere rejected as involving too much 
disturbance of the established Southern industrial 
order. Moreover, as a matter of practical politics it 
suggested little hope of success. The Dred Scott 
item was more important because it offered a plaus- 
ible method of promoting slavery extension. It 
proved a boomerang, however, in furnishing some- 
thing new for the abolitionists to denounce. 

The territory involved in the Wilmot Proviso 
contest was that wrested from Mexico as the price 
of peace in 1846-47. The proj)osal made by this 
famous Proviso to exclude slavery from the whole 
of that acquisition was debated with great acrimony 
from 1846 to 1850. Meanwhile, rapid settlement 
led to an application by the people of the California 
portion of that region for admission to the Union 
with a non-slavery constitution. Under Clay's man- 
agement the Congressional bargain of 1850 admitted 
California as a free state and left the problem of 
slavery in Utah and New Mexico to be determined 
by the courts, or in due time by the settlers. 

Kansas-Nebraska, A Forlorn Hope. 

The pro-slavery element soon found that it had 
been outmanoeuvered in this so-called compromise. 



FEDEEAL POLITICS. 419 

and that its position was now more difficult and stra- 
tegically weaker than before. What Calhoun had real- 
ized in 1848 now came to be seen vividly by a large 
group of Southern leaders : that the preservation of 
the senatorial balance and Southern security was a 
forlorn hope as well as a desperate necessity. At 
this stage Stephen A. Douglas, Congressman from 
Illinois, in January, 1854, introduced his bill to open 
the Kansas-Nebraska region for settlement with a 
system of territorial government permitting any 
and all citizens of the United States to emigrate 
thither with their property, and to determine later 
for themselves by majority vote whether negro 
slavery should be locally permitted. Congress has- 
tily adopted Douglas' plan and erected the two ter- 
ritories of Kansas and Nebraska on a free-for-all 
basis of immigration. The act promptly aroused a 
bitter discussion in the sectional presses, and it 
shortly gave occasion for sectional rivalry in col- 
onizing voters in Kansas, and a bitter wrangle in 
Congress and the newspapers as to the legitimacy of 
the methods used by either side. 

Had the colonization of Kansas been a normal, 
spontaneous movement of people in search of better 
material opportunities, the North would have had 
the advantage. Its population was constantly 
swelled by European immigration, and the South, 
offering comparatively little inducement to wage- 
workers or small farmers and receiving practically 
no recruits, had well-nigh exhausted its remnant of 
colonizing strength in Missouri, Arkansas and 
Texas. Moreover, the Kansas soil and climate of- 
fered little inducement for colonization by men with 
plantation gangs. When the issue took the form of 
promoting and financing an abnormal rush of voters 
and fighters into the territory, the South was again 
and more decisively at a disadvantage. The free- 



420 POLITICAL HISTORY. 

soilers had their society organizations and society 
funds at command, and in their communities a great 
supply of floating capital was available for any 
emergency of the popular cause, whereas the South- 
ern people were very slightly organized and, as 
usual, short of cash. The one advantage of the pro- 
slavery side was dangerous: the proximity of Mis- 
souri and the willingness of the pro-slavery Mis- 
sourians to invade Kansas on election days and 
stuff the ballot boxes. When the free-soilers de- 
nounced this practice, the reply followed that the 
colonization of anti-slavery voters by the Emigrant 
Aid Societies was also illegitimate, and the devil, 
whether in saint's clothing or not, must be fought 
with fire. 

Secession. 

A recent field inquiry by the present writer among 
the people on both sides of the Missouri-Kansas 
boundary has given him reason to believe that there 
was a much more even distribution of virtue and 
villainy between the respective factions than the 
historians have generally described. The crusading 
spirit, whether pro- or anti-slavery, was shared by 
the just and the unjust; and the agencies for col- 
onizing voters, North and South, enlisted immi- 
grants in the stress of the times with little inquiry 
as to their personal qualitj^ The equipment and ad- 
vice given the anti-slavery colonists suggested aptly 
the nickname ''Beecher's Bibles" for their Sharp's 
rifles. The hideous murders by John Brown and his 
sons on the Pottawottamie were not an unnatural 
product of the conditions. On the other hand, many 
of the Missourians who invaded Kansas on election 
days were moved by an emotional exaltation not 
unlike that which impelled friends of the negro to 
despise and defeat the fugitive slave rendition law 
in Ohio or Massachusetts. Others in the Missouri 



FEDERAL POLITICS. 421 

bands, of course, went in dogged anger ; while youths 
joined the junkets in the same holiday spirit of ad- 
venture which led many thousands a few years later 
to join the great armies in Virginia. 

The conditions in Kansas led quickly to reprisals. 
Guerrilla warfare broke out, and the free-soilers 
were the first to cry outrage. The slavery advocates 
retorted that their men had done less outrage than 
the free-soilers. The politicians and the masses of 
the people in each section had now reached the stage 
where they were deaf to any arguments but those of 
their own side; and each section proceeded to work 
itself into a frenzy of bitterness. Kesponsibility for 
the Kansas crisis is attributable, in part, to the folly 
of Douglas and his followers in assigning a huge na- 
tional problem to the decision of prospective settlers 
in vacant territory, and partly to the irrepressible 
character which the general struggle between the 
sections had acquired. In 1858 the free-soilers 
raised such a clamor over ''bleeding Kansas" and 
the exclusive pro-slavery responsibility for her 
bleeding, and wrought the North into such a rage of 
resentment, that numerous moderate Southerners 
came to advocate the admission of Kansas into the 
Union as a free state in order to mitigate the crisis. 
But Kansas was kept in a ''bleeding" territorial 
status for two years longer. Dwelling constantly on 
this issue, the abolitionists increased the advocates 
of the radical anti-slavery program to such an extent 
that when, in the fall of 1860, the Republican party 
captured the presidency, it gave high promise of gov- 
ernment without respect to Southern sentiment or 
interests. The Southern body politic, long develop- 
ing a distinct national sentiment, now finally faced 
the alternative of submitting to the prospect of early 
oppression or of immediately seceding from the 
Union. 



422 POLITICAL HISTORY. 

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Bimey, William: James G. Birney and his Times (New York, 1890); 
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South in American History (New York, 1902); Burgess, J. W.: The Middle 
Period (New York, 1897); Cairnes, J. E.: The Slave Power (London, 1862, 
2d ed. enlarged, London, 1863); Calhoun, J. C: Works (6 vols., Charles- 
ton, 1853-5); Claiborne, J. F. H.: Life of John A. Quitman (New York, 
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(Richmond, 1857), and Sociology for the South (Richmond, 1854); Flem- 
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gall, W. G.: Fugitive Slaves (Boston, 1891); McPherson, J. H. T.: History 
of Liberia (in Johns Hopkins University Studies, IX., No. 10); Paulding, 
J. K.: Slavery in the United States (New York, 1836); Parker, Joel: Per- 
sonal Liberty Laws (1861); Pollard, E. A.: Black Diamonds (New York, 
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P.: History of the United States; Sawyer, G. S. : Southern Institutes (Phila- 
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W. H.: Tfie Underground Railroad (New York, 1898); Smith, T. C: 
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States (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1868-70); Still, William: The Underground 
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1882), and History of tJie United States; Weeks, S. B.: Anti-Slavery Senti- 
ment in the South (in SoutJiern History Association Publications, Vol. XL, 
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Slave Power in America (3 vols., Boston, 1882-7); Wise, H. A.: Seven 
Decades of the Union (Philadelphia, 1872); American Colonization So- 
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Argument (Augusta, 1860, Comprising essays by Hammond, Harper, 
Bledsoe and others); The Pro-Slavery Argument (Philadelphia, 1852, 
containing essays by Dew, Hammond, Harper and Simms). 

Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, 

Professor of History, TuZane University of Louisiana. 



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